[thegh0st]

Is there an app (like on stock Android) that will show me what's currently in RAM? I read elsewhere on the forum that 100MB or less of available RAM should be fine. Is that really the case? I'm regretting not getting the Fire TV Box that has 2GB of RAM at this point, but hoping to learn enough about Kodi to salvage the Stick.

you left a keyword. available free memory. that is what the 100MB was refering to. most Apps that run on Android (v4 or up) you can side load to a Fire TV Stick just like you did KODI. if you have an app you used try it. stock Android is a pretty broad term. as for what is eating your memory, hard to say since I have no clue what all you have done with your Fire TV Stick. myself, I've never experienced that. I've had KODI lockup from time to time. that's it so far.

maybe bite the bullet and reset the stick and start over? or could you backup KODI, reset stick, restore the backup and see if you still get the critical memory warning.

1 GB of RAM is more than enough for Kodi on Android. Kodi runs perfectly on devices with only 512MB of RAM.

Your buffering and cache warnings have nothing to do with running out of RAM. Buffering happens when something (it might not be your end of the connection) is too slow to send the video over. The cache warning is just saying that it is buffering a lot.

technically 512MB of the 1GB is not available to KODI or any other app. it's dedicated to video on the Fire TV Stick. I've read enough on the net to learn that much. was wondering why KODI didn't show a total of 1GB as Amazon advertises. turns out it's an advertising gimmick. technically not false though.

[Ned Scott]

1 GB of RAM is more than enough for Kodi on Android. Kodi runs perfectly on devices with only 512MB of RAM.

Your buffering and cache warnings have nothing to do with running out of RAM. Buffering happens when something (it might not be your end of the connection) is too slow to send the video over. The cache warning is just saying that it is buffering a lot.

technically 512MB of the 1GB is not available to KODI or any other app. it's dedicated to video on the Fire TV Stick. I've read enough on the net to learn that much. was wondering why KODI didn't show a total of 1GB as Amazon advertises. turns out it's an advertising gimmick. technically not false though.

It's not an advertising gimmick. The Fire TV stick has 1GB of RAM. Like all computers, android devices, smartphones, whatever, the total amount of RAM is listed regardless of what is available to applications. It has always been this way, for everything.

The Fire TV stick's available RAM, even after what is taken away for the OS, is still far more than Kodi needs. This is a fact. The only way you can eat up more is to install things that run in the background, but the Fire OS (basically Android) will kill things if it needs more RAM for the active application.

[thegh0st]

I understand what you're saying. to me, that is an advertising gimmick. I base my opinion coming from a computer background. when I have 6GBs of RAM and a video card with it's own 2GBs I don't claim to have a system with 8GBs of RAM. even if you can use video GPUs for more than video now. and on the reverse, if a computer uses an onboard component (video card) and you dedicate 1GB of system RAM to that component, you can usually still see the RAM (or adjust the amount dedicated up or down - just using 1GB as an example). none of this is the case with the Fire TV Stick. and if what I read was correct (I know it's the internet) then the memory is also segregated completely from each other. could be mistaken on that but just going from what I've read plus I've never tried to root and further customize a Fire TV Stick.

that was my point. I completely agree the 512 is plenty. as I stated I've not had an issue. I will say thumbnails can't eat up a huge amount of diskspace as I've seen my storage room drop considerably and found the cause to be thumbnails. that folder got to over 2GBs. browsing through it, it was repetitive images also and images I don't even remember viewing, and ones you'd think should have just been auto-deleted.

[Ned Scott]

There is a single 1GB module of RAM. The split is done in software. This is very common with ARM devices, including the Raspberry Pi. It is also no different than having an Intel PC with integrated graphics.

[thegh0st]

ah. nice to know from someone who knows for a fact. seems odd that it isn't seen somewhere or guess I haven't used the right apps. any chance you know if a rooted FTVS device can be configured/adjusted to split the memory in different increments (how it works with integrated graphics)? would be interesting to see how it media caches with different available amounts of RAM if it's possible.

[technisol]

No different, but if a portion of that RAM can never be used as heap or variable space or program storage then it is misleading to advertise it as RAM, it is no longer RAM it is video buffer no matter the platform. Yikes, I'm sick of a world with limited Unlimited plans and the like. OTOH, I recall that interrupt vectors and memory mapped I/O have always shared space with RAM and no one carps too much about that in an accepted architecture, and let's not even get started on bank switching...

Strictly speaking, if the CPU cannot use a portion of RAM as random access memory because it is devoted to video buffering in the system then it is no longer RAM from an architecture point of view. The component is RAM, but in terms of architecture it is devoted to being a video buffer. MISLEADING! If you can vary the amount devoted to video buffer and still meet your maximum claims of resolution and color depth then what is leftover could be regarded as classic RAM, but the waters are getting pretty murky. If the accepted practice is to devote a specific portion to video buffering then it should not be regarded as RAM by anyone but a huckster or a salesman. Once again, I guess it comes back to "accepted practice."

It's sort of like having a gold plated crown and claiming to have a golden crown, while technically correct in both appearance and usage, it is nonetheless not a golden crown. Archimedes knew the difference, oughtn't we?

[Ned Scott]

So is it false advertising to say that the Raspberry Pi 2 has 1GB of RAM? Is the Raspberry Pi Foundation a bunch of hucksters? Or false advertising to say that the base model Chromebox has 2GB of RAM? They are not misleading you, they are telling you the size of the RAM module.

It's similar to how many cores a CPU has, which honestly has very little to do with the speed of the CPU. There are tons of 4 core and even 8 core CPUs that don't hold a candle to other 2 core CPUs. You can't just look at the raw specs and yell foul play just because one system works differently than another.

Even if you had the full 1GB of RAM available to Android, that says nothing about how much of it will be used by Fire OS-specific things, such as background services that Amazon chooses to run all the time. How would it be any different if Amazon chose to always take half of the RAM?

I understand what you guys are saying, but in this case that idea is a silly. No one is hiding anything from anyone. No one is cheating customers.

EDIT: Semi-related, Kodi's own system requirements (wiki) take in account the possibility of needing shared RAM when we give RAM requirements.

[thegh0st]

No different, but if a portion of that RAM can never be used as heap or variable space or program storage then it is misleading to advertise it as RAM, it is no longer RAM it is video buffer no matter the platform. Yikes, I'm sick of a world with limited Unlimited plans and the like. OTOH, I recall that interrupt vectors and memory mapped I/O have always shared space with RAM and no one carps too much about that in an accepted architecture, and let's not even get started on bank switching...

Strictly speaking, if the CPU cannot use a portion of RAM as random access memory because it is devoted to video buffering in the system then it is no longer RAM from an architecture point of view. The component is RAM, but in terms of architecture it is devoted to being a video buffer. MISLEADING! If you can vary the amount devoted to video buffer and still meet your maximum claims of resolution and color depth then what is leftover could be regarded as classic RAM, but the waters are getting pretty murky. If the accepted practice is to devote a specific portion to video buffering then it should not be regarded as RAM by anyone but a huckster or a salesman. Once again, I guess it comes back to "accepted practice."

It's sort of like having a gold plated crown and claiming to have a golden crown, while technically correct in both appearance and usage, it is nonetheless not a golden crown. Archimedes knew the difference, oughtn't we?

I share your opinion. already said my part on it. the way it is advertised is the issue. it should have an asterisk or something or note (512MB dedicated to Video). the advertised specs suggest 1GB of RAM (makes me think usable random access memory). anyways. opinions. nice to know it's not only me.

So is it false advertising to say that the Raspberry Pi 2 has 1GB of RAM? Is the Raspberry Pi Foundation a bunch of hucksters? Or false advertising to say that the base model Chromebox has 2GB of RAM? They are not misleading you, they are telling you the size of the RAM module.

It's similar to how many cores a CPU has, which honestly has very little to do with the speed of the CPU. There are tons of 4 core and even 8 core CPUs that don't hold a candle to other 2 core CPUs. You can't just look at the raw specs and yell foul play just because one system works differently than another.

Even if you had the full 1GB of RAM available to Android, that says nothing about how much of it will be used by Fire OS-specific things, such as background services that Amazon chooses to run all the time. How would it be any different if Amazon chose to always take half of the RAM?

I understand what you guys are saying, but in this case that idea is a silly. No one is hiding anything from anyone. No one is cheating customers.

EDIT: Semi-related, Kodi's own system requirements (wiki) take in account the possibility of needing shared RAM when we give RAM requirements.

don't know anything about Raspberrys other than what I read ages ago. haven't played with a Chromebox either. if 2GB of that RAM isn't usable then I'd feel the same about it. the mislead comes in where the advertising doesn't says "size of RAM module" nor does it mention anything about some of the RAM being dedicated. straight from Amazon - Memory 1 GB. if you want to disagree sure it doesn't say hardly anything so it could be taken however you like it but to myself it implies 1 GB of RAM not anything about video. also it states - GPU VideoCore4 (nothing stated here about memory being used or how much). last thing to point out, it states - Storage 8 GB internal. I don't know if you have kept up with phones but some modern cells and tablets these days are modifying how they term storage data because that to is misleading. and has mislead the public greatly. many average users (I'm guessing many of the 1 post members would be in this group) assumed they had 8GB to store what they liked. now some actually include a line about available GBs vs total GBs. samething in my book. at least that was obivous and I could browse a hard drive and know they were full of crap and didn't know what they were talking about. when it comes to 512MB or memory I can't see. that's another story.

also reminds me of the days when CPU cores were cast on one die vs each core having their own diecast. been even longer since I've read up on that. might have been the dual cores vs the core 2 duos. personally I think those names were similar on purpose. my opinion again.

as for the last part, I don't know if FTV OS would use more RAM since more was available (in the possibility memory allocation could be adjusted). that's why I said it would be interesting if you could adjust the amounts to test the effects.

[technisol]

I think it is both a matter of perspective and expectations. I like transparency in engineering specs, not "advertising", and let's not kid ourselves that the marketing department doesn't have as much, if not more, control over how things are written as specs as the engineering team anymore.

Of course, one also must deal with "reality" in terms of "if the competition is spec'ing their product that way we have to also in order to compete." I get it, I just fail to like it or think it is the correct or even honorable approach. It doesn't make it right because "everyone else is doing it", it doesn't make it transparent as it should be(an asterisk with caveats pointed out somewhere on the page would be fine), and it doesn't change the meaning of "unlimited" to "limited" as AT&T and others would like us to accept. I'm just drawing a parallel, not trying to indicate one issue is as bad as the other.

Maybe it's a sign of growing older, but one grows weary of a world wherein even engineering specs are written to obfuscate... whether purposefully, or to retain or capture market share. Maybe I just miss the old days where one choose a processor, concentrated on available address space and integrated static or dynamic RAM, NVRAM, etc., as one liked within the limits of available chipsizes and address space with a nod to bank switching and I/O decoding as one liked.

[Ned Scott]

You guys are reading too much into this. I seriously doubt the Amazon PR department even knows how the RAM is split. They just know that it has a 1GB RAM module, and that's what they list on the website. Of course, there are little white lies and exaggerations all around, but not everyone is out to get us and screw us. Sometimes something really is innocent.

[technisol]

"They just (k)now that it has a 1GB RAM module, and that's what they list on the website."

Well, I never said the PR department was full of engineers, and I only picked on AT&T by name... ;-) The problem is that 1GB is listed because it's the larger number. It's just like the pixel wars with digital cameras and even phones over the years. The actual image size always falls well below the advertised pixel density because of engineering reasons, but they never say it has a sensor of the size determined by the largest image it can produce, in part because of bayer interpolation(don't get me going) and color filtering, they advertise the even larger number including all the pixels on the sensor outside crop areas and used for focusing and aperture and metering light levels, etc. It's "accepted practice" and we all nod at it and let it go.

I'm not grousing about that, or attacking Amazon, just the over the top reporting of capabilities. When HALF your available memory is taken up by something devoted to other than general computing obvious mention should be made of that fact. A little graft is acceptable, half one's paycheck should only be attributable to governmental intervention.(And not even then!)

"Of course, there are little white lies and exaggerations all around, but not everyone is out to get us and screw us. Sometimes something really is innocent."

I dunno Ned. If I hear a scream issue from an alley, look down it and see a little blonde haired waif in a catholic school girl uniform with polished black shoes and little white ankle socks shaking like a leaf over a guy who looks like he got the worst of it, I just naturally assume she's a twenty something year old hooker in search of her next fix who got tired of her pimp, or her boyfriend, or the last idiot who followed her into said alley, and keep on walking... Worse thing that happens is I'm wrong. If I go tearing down the alley "all big brother is going to save you", who knows what the worst thing could be... perhaps bending down and asking the guy in the alley will yield usable information before the broken bottle gets shoved into a kidney prior to my wallet being extracted while landing near the first victim.

Any time it comes to someone "reaching into my wallet", I automatically assume they are not doing it out of a sense of charity or looking out for my well-being... ;-) So far it's working out and I still have both kidneys. It's prudent to be a bit cynical.